


Movie In My Mind

by moonix



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew just likes driving his boys around, Friendship, If life gives you baggage go on a trip, Kevin needs some non-alcoholic healing, Kissing, M/M, Motels, Neil and Kevin are hopeless Exy junkies, Neil is a cheeky shit as usual, Post canon, Roadtrip, Skinny-dipping, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 08:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: The summer after everything, Neil decides that he and Andrew need to take Kevin on a roadtrip. Motel shenanigans, mosquito bites, podcast squabbles and skinny-dipping ensue.





	Movie In My Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SpangleBangle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpangleBangle/gifts).



> A very early birthday fic for Reilly, who is a very rad enboo and a solid friend <3 I'm not sure if I really delivered on the platonic intimacy, but I hope you'll accept a summery fic oozing with friendship instead?
> 
> Warnings: some very brief mentions of scars and past abuse. Off-screen sexytimes.
> 
> Inspired by [this summery playlist](http://palmetttos.tumblr.com/post/174300591100/playlist-candyfloss-sunsets) by lolainslackss :) Title is from the song by Saint Raymond.

**i.**

It isn’t until after Riko’s funeral that Kevin starts spiralling.

Neil finds him collapsed in a bean bag for the third night in a row, not even drinking; just staring at the sliver of light reflecting off the vodka bottle. It’s birthday cake vodka, which is how Neil knows that things are serious.

“Right,” Neil says, poking him between the shoulder blades with his foot. “Get up.”

Kevin just makes a small, wheezy noise and doesn’t move. He seems frozen; locked up in his own mind. Neil knows the feeling too well. He prods harder, then gives him a not-too-gentle kick which finally seems to jostle him out of his ragdoll state. With a groan, Kevin rolls over and away from Neil’s foot.

“Pack your shit,” Neil tells him. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” Kevin croaks, blinking his surroundings like he’s forgotten that they’re in Columbia. “But we just got here.”

“It’s obviously not far enough,” Neil says. “I’ll get Andrew.”

**ii.**

They dump their bags in the back of Andrew’s car and stop at a gas station to fill up on snacks, drinks and cigarettes. The air is still sticky with the heat of the day, even this late at night. Neil pinches the fabric of his Trojans t-shirt between his fingers and shakes it to get a semblance of a breeze going. On second thought, it’s not his Trojans shirt, it’s Kevin’s.

He pushes Kevin into the passenger seat for once and lies down in the back with his feet propped up against the window, angling his body so as to catch a maximum amount of airflow from the air conditioning. Kevin finds a radio station that plays classical music at night, which Andrew tolerates. They drive and meet the sunrise halfway, a pillow-creased morning stirring awake around them. Neil thinks he must have dozed off for a while, but he isn’t sure. Time spent in cars has always passed weirdly for him.

“Breakfast?” Kevin slurs hopefully as Andrew pulls into the parking lot of a roadside diner. He yawns, loud and wide, and hits his elbow on the window as he tries to stretch his long limbs.

Andrew, who is never particularly verbal but even less so in the mornings, barely grunts and wanders off to smoke a cigarette by himself. Neil and Kevin go inside and splash tepid water at their faces in the restroom before ordering one of everything on the breakfast menu to share, and some extra pancakes doused in syrup for Andrew.

Kevin carefully picks out all of the peach slices from his fruit salad and drapes them on top of Andrew’s pancakes. Andrew eats neatly around them and passes them on to Neil. They taste too sweet from the syrup, but Neil still gets a feeling like the ghost of his mom is breathing down his neck when he doesn’t finish food.

**iii.**

“Where are we going?” Kevin asks later that day, fingertips tracing a meandering path down the road map in his lap. He’s eating an apple and Neil leans forward and steals it out of his lax grip in a moment of distraction.

“Nowhere,” Andrew says tonelessly. He’s wearing sunglasses, really big ones, and a sleeveless black top that Neil used as a pillow last night. The word – nowhere – settles like a sip of something warm and potent in Neil’s stomach. Nothing, nowhere. He knows the importance of these non-words.

Kevin looks like he’s going to protest, but then he shuts up. Wisely.

Andrew and Neil switch seats after they stop for lunch and Neil turns up the volume on the radio, by now tuned into an odd Italian programme. The song reminds him of a busker in Verona that his mom only allowed him to stop and listen to for the briefest of moments before dragging him on.

He flicks glances at Andrew’s face in the rear-view mirror, sleep-slack and shiny with sweat as he dozes, a faint red imprint on the bridge of his nose where the sunglasses have been digging in all day. Kevin catches his eye and they smoothly segue into discussing the new Foxes that will be joining their line-up in the fall, making use of the time Andrew’s out for the count the only way they know how.

**iv.**

Kevin picks a motel for them and they check in as the sunset turns from billowy candyfloss pink to heady, drippy orange. The only room still available has a small and a slightly larger bed and Neil’s feet stutter in the door, but Andrew dumps his bag on one side of the larger bed without a blink and goes to take a shower.

The motel has a modest swimming pool in the basement and Kevin ropes Neil into keeping him company while he swims laps. Neil sits on the edge and lets his bare legs dangle in the water, the stagnant air wicking up moisture and stinking of chlorine. He’s going to smell like it even just from being in the room.

“We should go wild swimming,” Kevin pants, pulling himself up on the edge of the pool and kicking his feet lazily. “Somewhere no one’s going to see.”

There it is again, one of those special non-words that mean nothing yet everything. No one, in this case, includes Andrew and Kevin, who are both familiar with the ghastly sight of Neil’s scars.

“Maybe,” Neil concedes. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

**v.**

Neil is awake, watching Andrew in the dark.

Andrew is awake, watching Neil in the dark.

A mosquito flies past Neil’s ear, filling it with high-pitched buzzing. He swats at it weakly and it disappears for a moment, but just as he’s starting to relax it’s back again, this time even closer.

“Stop it,” Andrew murmurs when Neil twitches and flaps his hand around.

“I hate them,” Neil whispers. Thinks of too many nights spent cooped up in stale motel rooms with nothing but the mosquitoes and his paranoia to torment him, his mother’s too-warm weight pressed against his side, one hand sweaty on the gun under his pillow.

Kevin snores lightly and turns around in his sleep.

“I need some air,” Neil decides and squirms himself off the bed. He doesn’t bother with shoes and pads outside barefoot, finds a low wall to perch on and looks up at a sky freckled with stars. He’s always felt more at ease out in the open.

It doesn’t take long for Andrew to join him with his pack of cigarettes. The snick of his lighter is a grounding noise, the smoke a soothing distraction. He’s wearing Kevin’s Trojans shirt – it just keeps getting mixed in with their stuff, and it’s so _soft_ – and his jaw is being shaded in with reluctant stubble. Neil is mesmerised by it. Sometimes he thinks that looking at Andrew is more addictive than the cigarettes.

Andrew stubs out his cigarette and huffs an impatient breath through his nose. Then he reaches out for Neil and they both move in at the same time, bumping noses and finding safe zones to hold on to; the sweat-damp hair at the back of Neil’s head, the silky fabric of Andrew’s shirt. Andrew tastes like smoke and mouthwash and smells faintly musty like the bedsheets, and Neil kisses himself silly on Andrew’s blunt mouth and sucks in an unsteady breath.

“God,” he says, “you’re so-”

Andrew reels him back in and bites the head off the wild creature of whatever Neil was going to say. Even Neil doesn’t really know, he’s too dizzy and hot, being lapped up by Andrew’s tongue.

The door slides open behind them and they jerk apart, blinking in the sudden overspill of light.

“Guys?” Kevin mumbles. “What…”

“Either turn the light off or close the damn door,” Neil snaps, prodding at his sore, buzzing lips with his thumb. “Fucking mosquitoes.”

Andrew lights another cigarette. Kevin sinks down on the wall beside Neil and holds his hand out for it, coughing spectacularly at the first inhale.

“We were never allowed, at Evermore,” he says, gazing at the glowing tip of the cigarette in wonder. He moves it around in a swirly pattern, like a glow-worm flitting around his head, then takes another drag, this time with somewhat better results. “Jean and I smoked an entire pack once, because we’d bought it and we couldn’t just keep it. God, I was so sick.”

Andrew snorts, half-amused, and takes the cigarette back when Kevin is done with it.

**vi.**

Neil’s legs are covered in angry pink, swollen mosquito bites. His hand keeps drifting down to scratch at them, making them worse. Andrew takes one look at his legs, clucks his tongue, and stops at a pharmacy to buy some sticky aloe gel that smells wet and plantsy. Kevin stocks up on sun-screen for all of them and awkwardly hands a new packet of condoms to Neil when they’re back in the car waiting for Andrew to finish smoking.

“You should use them,” he coughs, eyes fixed on something entirely uninteresting outside.

Neil squashes the initial hot flash of embarrassment and decides to mess Kevin around a bit.

“Hey, so… I’ve always wondered,” he says slowly, taking one out of the box and tearing open the foil packet. “How exactly do you put those on?”

Kevin’s ears turn furiously pink. Neil shakes out the condom, holding it up against the light, and watches as Kevin tries very hard to keep a straight face and explain. It’s almost painful to witness, and Neil can only hold his laughter in for so long.

“Asshole,” Kevin sputters. “Now what are we gonna do with that?”

“What, this?” Neil grins, waving the limp condom at him. “I don’t know. Ask Andrew.”

He tosses it on the back seat and Kevin dives after it with a choked noise. Neil tucks the box away in his backpack and starts the car, still chuckling to himself.

**vii.**

The humidity builds and builds. Neil’s t-shirt is damp with sweat, his hair is plastered to his forehead and his legs are still itching. Kevin has hooked up his iPod to the stereo and they’ve been listening to podcasts all day – Andrew vetoed anything related to Exy, so they’ve gone from true crime to history to Welcome To Night Vale, which both Kevin and Andrew seem to like. Neil doesn’t really get it, but it makes for a good distraction.

Clouds start to sour the sky in the late afternoon. The noise of the thunder is almost loud enough to drown out the podcast and the heat inside the car is near unbearable despite the air conditioning, because Kevin insists it’s unhealthy to turn it up any higher. It starts raining just as they pull up outside another motel, and Neil can’t resist jogging a few laps of the parking lot in the downpour until he’s completely soaked through.

Andrew is waiting for him in the door with their bags, arms crossed and face sun-flushed. He’s hot to the touch when Neil rubs his fingers through the scruff on his jaw and Neil presses a wet kiss to the corner of his mouth, making it twitch.

“Kevin gave me a box of condoms,” he murmurs against the shell of Andrew’s ear.

“Is that supposed to turn me on,” Andrew murmurs back, voice creased with soft irritation.

“Just making conversation,” Neil grins.

“Well, make it somewhere else,” Andrew grumbles, pushing him down the hall. “You’re sopping wet. Idiot.”

“Your idiot,” Neil says cheekily.

Andrew doesn’t correct him.

**viii.**

This time, Kevin gets his own room and Neil and Andrew share one with two beds. Neil, clean and towelled off and dressed only in his underwear, sprawls across one of the beds and watches the rain while Andrew takes his turn in the shower. The TV murmurs gently in the background and Neil dozes off for a bit before Andrew comes back.

“Yes or no?” Andrew asks, hovering next to the bed. He climbs over him when Neil hums his consent and traces the constellations of mosquito bites, moles and freckles on Neil’s legs with cool fingertips on his way up. Neil shivers despite being warm.

“We have to be quiet,” Neil mumbles, arching his back when Andrew licks a wet swipe over his nipple and sucks it into his mouth. “The walls are really thin and Kevin’s right next door.”

“Be quiet then,” Andrew says.

Easier said than done.

**ix.**

The next day is a little bit cooler. Neil and Kevin go for a run in the morning, leaving Andrew to sleep in. They bring back breakfast and eat in Kevin’s room with the windows thrown wide, enjoying the breeze. Andrew has a hickey on his neck, which Kevin is uncharacteristically tactful enough not to mention.

Andrew drives for most of the day, smoking out the open window and looking almost content. Neil and Kevin squabble over the music until Andrew huffs out an annoyed breath and lets them listen to an Exy podcast for half an hour. Once that’s done, he turns off the radio with a scowl and swats Kevin’s hand away when he tries to switch it back on.

In the afternoon, they drive through a small, nondescript town and Andrew abruptly hits the brakes outside of an uninspired looking cinema.

They get tickets for a James Bond movie and settle in with popcorn – sweet for Andrew and salty for Kevin, while Neil has a little bit of both from their buckets. Kevin starts snoring quietly halfway through the movie. Neil, too, gets bored and successfully distracts Andrew with kisses since they’re the only people in the theatre, anyway.

Andrew tastes like sugar and butter and sneaks a hand up under Neil’s t-shirt. Neil feels like he’s floating in space, pleasantly removed from everything.

If this is nothing, then Neil wants nothing, too.

**x.**

“Remember when you said we could go wild swimming?” Kevin asks that night when they’re back in the car, driving aimlessly. Through some unspoken agreement, they haven’t made any attempt to find a motel yet.

“I only remember saying maybe,” Neil grumbles, kicking the back of Kevin’s seat.

“Turn left,” Kevin tells Andrew. Andrew turns left and follows the rest of Kevin’s directions until they roll to a stop at the end of a dirt path between two fields. There’s a small lake, surrounded by gnarled trees and high grass, with a crumbling wood pier and the remains of a barbecue pit. Kevin checks his phone once again and hums, satisfied.

“We’re here.”

They get out of the car. Neil stretches out the kinks in his back and Andrew sits on the hood of the car with a cigarette, the engine still ticking quietly. Kevin is already taking off his clothes.

“Last one in has to take me to the nearest court tomorrow and practise with me,” he calls over his shoulder before jumping off the mossy pier. There’s a mighty splash, then he bobs back up and shakes his wet hair like a dog before happily paddling around.

Neil casts an amused sideways glance at Andrew, who sighs and takes off his shirt. Neil nearly falls over himself in his haste to beat him to nakedness, and they race each other to the shore, though Andrew roughly shoves him into the dirt just before he reaches the water.

“Damn it,” Neil mutters, picking himself out of the mud. There was never a question of him accompanying Kevin to the court, but he’d really wanted Andrew to come practise with them.

The water is surprisingly warm. Neil swims a few laps around the circumference of the lake, focusing on his breathing and the sounds of Kevin ahead of him and Andrew splashing about on his back by the pier. Neil and Kevin turn their last round into a semi-official race, which Neil wins by a margin despite Kevin’s advantage of longer limbs. Breathing harshly, he claims a kiss from Andrew as his winnings and gets unceremoniously dunked under water for his trouble.

Afterwards, they all lie naked in the grass and watch the stars. Neil and Andrew both have their armbands off, though if Kevin noticed, he didn’t comment.

“I think,” Kevin says slowly, “I’m ready to go back now.”

“You just miss the court,” Neil teases.

“Don’t you?” Kevin shoots back.

“Oh, definitely,” Neil smiles.

**xi.**

They arrive back at the house in Columbia in the early evening, the sky a pastel minty swirl with soft white clouds strung across its length like bunting. Neil yawns as he gets out, popping his joints. He’s looking forward to clean clothes and a proper bed, and maybe some microwave mac and cheese. He is a simple man of simple desires.

“I thought we were going straight to the court,” Kevin complains grumpily.

“You’re welcome to walk,” Andrew tells him, flicking his hand in the general direction of Palmetto. Kevin rolls his eyes but follows them into the house without further protest.

“We can go for a run,” Neil suggests. “I feel like my legs have atrophied spending all this time cooped up in a car.”

Andrew makes a beeline straight for the freezer and demonstratively pulls out a pint of brownie and peanut butter ice-cream. He flops down on the couch with it, putting his feet up on the coffee table, and turns on the TV. It’s still tuned to ESPN, and they happen to land right in the middle of a segment about Riko Moriyama.

“This again,” Neil sighs, already gearing up for another Kevin Day nervous breakdown. It’s a good thing he poured the last of the birthday cake vodka down the drain before they left.

Kevin, however, merely shrugs, picks up the remote and switches over to a different channel.

“Let’s go for a run,” he says. “Andrew? You coming?”

Andrew’s response consists of a silent middle finger. With a little jolt to his stomach, Neil realises that his armbands are still off. Kevin still doesn’t say anything about that, and instead goes to change into his running clothes.

**xii.**

Neil has taken over Nicky’s room for the time being, but it’s too weird sleeping all by himself after all those nights cooped up together in the car and the motels.

He doesn’t think Andrew is going to want company and doesn’t want to intrude on his private space again so soon. Instead he wanders into the kitchen for a cold glass of milk and finds Kevin sitting outside on the porch with one of Andrew’s cigarettes.

“Smoking is bad for you, you know,” Neil tells him, bumping their elbows together.

“I’m not smoking,” Kevin protests. “I mean, I am right now, but not – habitually.”

“Right,” Neil snorts. He takes the cigarette from between Kevin’s fingers, takes a drag and stubs it out on the naked concrete. “Can’t sleep?”

“Neither can you,” Kevin points out.

“We should go to the court,” Neil says. “Early tomorrow morning. I’ll ask Andrew to come.”

“Too much information,” Kevin mutters, scrunching up his nose.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. But yes. I feel like an amputee without my racquet.”

“God, you’re such a wreck,” Neil laughs, leaning back on his hands. “But same.”

They fall silent, watching the trees swaying gently in the breeze, moths flitting around in the grimy light of the street lamps.

“Look,” Neil says, pointing at the sky. “That over there looks a bit like an Exy racquet, if you squint.”

He traces the made-up constellation with his finger and Kevin hums and nods.

“And a ball and helmet, right next to it,” he adds. Neil can’t really see it, but he agrees anyway.

“So,” Kevin says. “Did you ever figure out how to use those condoms I gave you?”

Neil laughs and shoves him hard.

“None of your business,” he says. “But yeah. Now fuck off, we need sleep so we can practise tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait,” Kevin grins. Neil smiles back fiercely.

“Yeah,” he says. “Same.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](http://annawrites.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
